


The Big Fish

by VictoriaAGrey



Series: Long Live the King & Queen [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blackmail, Boss Bitch Beth, Business, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Humor, Rio's Gold Gun, Sexism, Sexual Content, how was that not a tag already??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 11:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19317169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaAGrey/pseuds/VictoriaAGrey
Summary: Rio makes his first move to take out Beth's enterprise since declaring war and Beth makes a move of her own.





	The Big Fish

**Author's Note:**

> this can be read as a standalone fic, but it is best to have read the first part
> 
> also, I'm something of a movie buff and I've apparently given Annie this trait?? my fic, my rules

There were few things that Beth truly despised, but nothing grated on her more than a man dismissing her as easily as one did a particularly annoying child.

She glared across the desk at Richard Berman, a local businessman who’d just told her he would no longer be needing her particular brand of assistance, then went back to his paperwork as if she were no longer there. Beth felt Ruby’s hand come to rest on top of hers where it had tightened in a death grip on the arm of the cheap oak chair she was seated in, as if she sensed the rage bubbling beneath the surface. It took the last shred of composure Beth had to unclench her hand and release her jaw so she could speak without cutting him to pieces.

“Is that so, Richard?” she said, her tone as sickly sweet as cotton candy.

He looked back up at her and blinked, as if surprised she were still there. The fact that she could tell it was practiced, as if he regularly dismissed people - _women_ \- with such disregard, multiplied her rage exponentially.

“Yes, that’s it. We’re done.”

Beth nodded her head. “I’m sure that’s what you thought.”

She could feel Ruby’s eyes shift to her, but she looked dead ahead into Berman’s eyes.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m willing to let you out of our little arrangement… for a fee, of course.”

Berman glared at her. “I already washed and paid out the last drop. I don’t owe you shit.”

“Consider it a gesture of gratitude,” she said over him. The gall of this man, to speak down to her as if she didn’t sweep in at the exact right moment to save his business, to help him preserve the lifestyle he and his family were accustomed to. And in a way, he did the same for her. His willingness to wash her cash gave her a stable foothold in her new enterprise, which is the only reason why she was willing to deal with him at all. “$25,000 and you’re out.”

The bastard laughed, hard and loud, before addressing her, wiping fake tears from the corners of his eyes. “You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Reaching into her purse, Beth pulled out a manila folder and placed it on the desk in front of Berman. He opened it and his eyes went wide, skin draining of color as he flipped through picture after picture of him with his mistress on various dates, walking into bars and restaurants and seedy motel rooms. Annie’s favorite picture though, one which Beth had done her damnedest to not laugh at as Annie and Ruby wailed with laughter when Annie had flicked through the pictures she’d taken on a surveillance camera she’d nicked from Noah before he left for Arizona, was one of his mistress running to get something in her car while wearing her dominatrix outfit, Berman clearly tied up with a ball-gag in his mouth in the background, the mistress having failed to close the motel door the whole way. Beth heard Ruby snicker next to her and she did her best to restrict herself to an amused, vindictive smile.

“You’ve got 24 hours, Richard, or your wife finds these in her inbox at the school.”

“I need more time,” he stuttered, his confidence giving way to fear. “A week at least.”

“Why? Is your money all tied up?”

A giggle escaped Ruby’s mouth and she turned her head, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. Beth covered her mouth and bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from joining her. After taking a moment to appreciate his angry, fearful face, she tapped the desk a few times to bring his attention back to the pics, then stood, Ruby joining her. Just as they were about to walk out, he called over to them, his face red with fury.

“This is blackmail!”

“This is business!” she spat back at him, then walked out, slamming the door behind her.

Only once they were safely back within the confines of her minivan did Ruby let her confusion show.

“Why would he pull out now? He doesn’t have the money to fly solo yet.”

Beth knew as much; just last month she’d gone through his books herself. She gave him enough to get by and save what he had, but not enough to risk him saving enough to no longer need her and her fake cash. Now that she was the one with the supply, she held all the power and needed to keep it that way... _wanted_ to keep it that way. It kept him in her employ and her financially solvent. He may be getting what he needed, but she, Ruby, and Annie were the ones getting paid. Afterall, it was those at the top who saw the real money.

Everyday she inched closer to understanding Rio, whom she was certain had a hand in whatever was playing out with Berman. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she nearly ran a red light.

“He got a better offer.”

“We were giving the Gimp back there 20%,” Ruby said as she hooked her thumb back in the direction they came from. Beth smiled at the nickname they used to refer to him in private since Annie had been allowed to pick the movie for girl’s night and had chosen Pulp Fiction, much to her and Ruby’s confusion. It was far from their usual fair of rom-coms and dramas, which was Annie’s justification for it even after the movie ended and they both turned to her with A Look, but she’s happy they got an inside joke out of it. “That’s more than Rio ever gave us to wash his cash and you think he’s willing to fork out even more to that goon just to fuck you over?”

“I think you’re underestimating how much he wants to fuck me over.”

“I’ve never underestimated how much he wants to fuck you,” she retorted, a knowing smile gracing her face when Beth glared at her side-eyed. “Seriously, you think he’s willing to take a dip in his profits for a small fish like him?”

“He may be a small fish to Rio, but not us. Rio’s operation is massive, ours isn’t. He’s hitting us where it hurts… he knows the Gimp is our biggest fish.”

“Then what are we supposed to do? We don’t have the resources to go against him.”

Beth’s mouth quirked at the corner, filled with the promise that she had a plan to fuck Rio over. In fact, she’d already set it in motion.

“No, but the Gimp does.”

Ruby turned away from her then and up towards the sky. “Lord, what did I do to deserve having my family’s financial stability rest in the hands of a man called the Gimp?”

Beth didn’t have an answer, so she said nothing, and considering the exhausted sigh Ruby let out as she reached for her Starbucks in the cupholder, she didn’t think God had one for her either.

 

~~~

 

“That’s some Exorcist shit right there,” Annie said as she pulled her phone out of her back pocket. “We need to have that kid exorcised… excised? What’s the name of Ruby’s priest?”

Beth smacked her arm. “He’s not possessed. And Ruby’s not Catholic.”

“So what?” she shot back as they crossed the parking lot. “Catholics don’t corner the market on exorcisms.”

“The one you’re thinking of is Catholic.”

“Well, I don’t care. I want Ruby’s priest to do it. He seems trustworthy.”

“Says the woman who trusted Noah,” Beth said offhandedly as she narrowly avoided being run over by a grocery cart being pushed by a frazzled looking mom with a baby strapped to her chest and two five year olds screaming for her attention.

“Says the woman who trusts Rio.”

They stopped to glare at each other, both immediately recognizing that they had picked at fresh wounds, ones kept open because of their own inability to stop picking at them. Silently they agreed to let it go and started their walk again towards the back of the grocery store where the freezer was.

Beth was feeling more off-kilter than she was willing to admit, her inability to bite her tongue with the Noah comment evidence of that. Since Rio’s return the month before, her sleep was no less plagued by nightmares and the grief she had felt at his loss was replaced with an undercurrent of uncertainty, not knowing when and how he’d strike or how she would handle it when he did. She was walking on quicksand and she had no idea how she’d keep her head above the surface when he decided to disrupt the delicate dance that kept her moving.

The plan she had depended on several moving factors, the most prominent being her perception of Berman and the lengths he’d go to in order to keep the pictures from reaching his wife. All the possible ways her plan could go wrong played out in her mind as she stayed up all night with Danny as he threw up multiple times due to food poisoning, Annie choosing to focus on the vomiting instead of the whole “I haven’t slept in nearly 48 hours” bit.

Beth was being held together by nothing more than four cups of coffee,  a skin-tight red dress, and a go get em’ attitude.

“Your 24 hours are up, buddy,” Annie announced as they walked into the freezer, effectively snapping Beth out of her reverie. “You’re either going to be on the streets tonight or freezing your nipples off in a much kinkier way than this with your mistress depending on what you’re hiding in that coat.”

Berman glared at her, his loathing rolling off him in waves. “And how do I know you won’t send her the pictures just to get a leg over me?”

“Oh, only your dom has you over her leg,” Annie said with a wink, clearly proud of her wordplay. “Come on, Richard! What kinda business women would we be if we didn’t uphold our end of the bargain? Have we ever not upheld our promises?”

He continued to glare at Annie and Beth had reached her wits end with him and his hateful disposition, wanting nothing more than to punch him in his rotund face, but settling for any icy glare colder than the meat freezer their little clandestine meeting was taking place in.

“Answer her.”

Berman’s eyes shifted to her and she saw him flinch just the slightest bit, finally recognizing that she was far more dangerous than he’d given her credit for and that she was unafraid of unleashing her fury on him right where he stood.

“No.”

“Right you are, sir!” Annie clapped a hand on his back hard enough to jostle him and smiled at him when he turned to look at her. She kept her tone bubbly, as if it could single-handedly keep the mood from sinking any lower. “We have always done what we promised to do! And to think! If Beth here hadn’t walked in on your lovely wife crying in the bathroom in the middle of a PTA meeting, you wouldn’t have anything. You’d be sunk. Kinda hard to do considering you own three very successful grocery stores, but who am I to judge? I’m just a lowly criminal who has no idea how much harnesses and whips cost.”

The chill of the freezer was starting to bite into Beth’s skin, crystallizing her focus on the situation at hand and the greater plan, so she cut to the chase. She needed to know if she’d been right.

“The money, Richard. Do you have it or not?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he reached into his coat and pulled out a stack of cash. Triumph flowed through her when Annie snatched the cash out of his hand and counted it out; an even $25,000 in their possession.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Richard,” Beth said, her tone making it perfectly clear that the opposite was true as she slipped the bundle of cash in her purse. “Do tell Julia I said ‘hi.’”

Beth took a moment to appreciate the flash of fear on his face before she walked out of the freezer with Annie, their smiles restrained until the were no longer inside the store.

“Holy shit!” Annie squealed, smacking Beth’s arm multiple times as she jumped up and down. “25 g’s! That’s a whole month’s payout!”

“On top of what we already got this month. It’ll give us the capital we need to expand.”

“And to buy a round of top shelf margaritas tonight!” she sang, going full opera singer at the end as she spun on the spot.

Beth laughed at her sister’s antics, enjoying the lighthearted moment since they’d been in short supply the last few months. They’d been on the grind day and night to get their operation going for months and still were, but this felt like their first payout, the one that could finally get them firmly ahead of the game instead of chasing it. It felt good.

The only downside was that she may not get to enjoy it for long. The hours were ticking down to when Rio would find out what she’d done and come after her for it, and truth be told, Beth didn’t know how angry he’d be. He expected a war - welcomed it even - probably thinking he would be able to easily put her back in her place, but he didn’t fuck around when it came to his money. He could just as easily see it as a lost battle on the chess board that was their relationship, or see it as the endgame. Rio was many things, but predictable was not one of them.

So, Beth took the moment for what it was, allowing Annie to spin her when she reached for her hand and laughed past the doubts swirling through her tired mind.

 

~~~

 

It was late, the clock on her desk ticking past 9:30 pm, when she heard him coming.

She’d gone back to the dealership after dealing with the Gimp so she could sort out the paperwork on an incoming shipment of cars. That paperwork had segued into signing off on the sales that had taken place during the week, then pay for her employees, and before she knew it, her secretary had left and she was alone. Annie’s texts were growing more incessant by the hour for them to go get drinks, her and Ruby having already gotten dinner, and Beth came to the conclusion that it would be easier to just go out and get a drink with them than put up with their drunken tales for a week, all of which would explicitly state she was not there. Beth texted her that she’d be on her way in ten minutes, then got up from her desk to file her copies of everything she’d signed that day in the filing cabinet.

That’s when she heard the front entrance to the dealership open, loud enough to tell her that it’d been pulled open with force, and she knew.

Beth closed the cabinet she’d opened and then turned, watching as Rio made his way through the showroom. His usual swagger was gone, exchanged for an angry march that oddly made him look more still, the gold gun at his side catching the light through the shadows. A comforting calm fell over Beth as he approached her office and yanked open the door.

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

Rio stormed into her personal space and gripped the back of her neck firmly, pushing his gun into the skin beneath her chin. She noted that it was already cocked.

“Don’t play glib, it ain’t cute,” he said, fury scrawled on his features. “Where’s my money?”

“I don’t work for you anymore,” she pointed out, even knowing it would further piss him off.

The gun was pressed more forcefully into her chin.

“Berman cooked the books. Tried to hide it, but I saw what he pulled. Ain’t nobody can hide that much from me.” The hand on her neck tightened, surprisingly relieving some of the stress she was carrying there. “Spouted off some bullshit about a ‘gesture of gratitude’ when questioned about it. Thought that sounded like somethin' you’d say.”

Beth agreed, which is why she said it. She knew Berman would do anything to keep the pictures from his wife, not because he loved her, but because he was a misogynist who would do anything to keep the world from finding out he liked to be dominated by the very people he talked down to. He didn’t have the $25,000 to pay her off, not by a long shot, which left him with one option on such short notice.

Rio.

Figuring Rio would be sticking to a schedule as similar to the one before he’d gone underground to recover, it was about that time when he would be getting his cut and making a new drop, which meant that Berman _technically_ had the money… as long as he dipped into Rio’s cut. Beth knew he was smart, that he’d see the theft from a mile away and know it was because of her. She just didn’t know how long it would take him to notice.

Frankly, she was kind of impressed he caught it so fast.

“I don’t have it.”

“That just means you don’t have it here,” he retorted, seeing right through her. “Imma ask you one more time: where is my money?”

“Somewhere you’ll never find it.”

Rio scoffed, his mouth quirking in a vicious smirk. “You really think I’m unwillin' to ruin Annie’s third margarita to find out?”

Beth saw red then, their little game crashing down in front of her eyes. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and shoved him back into the filing cabinets, his shirt bunching in her hand as she used her knuckle to find the third bullet wound’s scar and press on it hard. He groaned above her, his breaths shortening until it devolved into a laugh.

“Fuck, Elizabeth, you ain’t messin’ around this time,” he said, his harsh tone curling through his laughter. The thumb of his hand gripping her neck started to move, caressing the area where she knew her carotid artery was. His face softened marginally as his smirk turned into a smile that she would label as affectionate if she didn’t know any better. “You know, your heartbeat didn’t increase once during this whole conversation… well, not until the end there.” He used his gun to push her hair back, then moved it to where the back of his hand was settled above her heart. “Know what that means? You’re gettin’ acclimatized to violence. That’s good. Might make a boss bitch of you yet.”

Beth could feel the shift, the combustible emotions between them bouncing back and forth until they became the one they were most familiar with, the one that caused them to make mistakes that they didn’t remotely address until it was too late. Mistakes she’d repeatedly thought about while he’d been gone, only to make another one when he came back and tempting her to make another one now.

There was a sliver of his skin exposed just above his beltline and she used the hand not gripping his shirt to caress her thumb over it, working her way towards the dip of his hip. She dug her nail in there, dragging it across the bone, leaving an angry red mark in its wake. His breathing was becoming shallow under her ministrations and it fueled her, made her grip his hip then move her hand lower, over the top of his thigh then inwards, cupping him through his jeans. She could feel that he was growing hard and she pressed her palm against him, providing him with the sort of relief that only mounted the pressure higher. He pushed into her hand and sighed, his thumb gliding along her jawline to tilt her face up towards him.

“Miss me already?”

Her eyes connected with his when he said that, but it wasn’t him that she saw, not him as he was in that moment.

Beth’s worlds collided then, her nightmares invading her waking hours and turning his mouth dropped open in a soft sigh into an evil smirk, the heated storm in his eyes into glittering vengeance. His teeth were painted red with the blood spilling out of his mouth and down his chin, slipping over his Adam’s apple and down past the collar of his shirt. She gasped in horror and stumbled backwards, his hands falling away easily, either out of surprise or because he’d been turned on enough to forget he’d been threatening her a minute ago. She grasped the edge of her desk, using it to stabilize her so she wouldn’t trip over her own two feet and embarrass herself any further.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked as she caught her breath, unable to look at him. It occurred to her that she should sound fearful asking that question, but she just sounded exhausted.

There was a pregnant pause before he responded. “No.”

“Then could you - could you just go… please.”

“Elizabeth -.”

She wondered what it cost him to say her name like that. What the toll was to his pride, his bravado, to say her name like he cared. She shut it out, turning her head farther away.

Beth cut him off before he could continue. “Please, just go. Please.”

Nearly a minute passed in silence, her breath finally starting to stabilize even though she felt anything but calm. She wanted to yell at him to stay, to go, to say something into the void, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. It was only when she stood upright again, facing away from him, that she heard him quietly exit. She waited until she saw his Cadillac leave the lot before she allowed herself to collapse on the couch, looking at the ceiling for answers she knew wouldn’t come.

If God refused to answer questions from someone like Ruby, there was no reason for it to answer her.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for your kudos, comments, critiques, angry banshee screams, or whatever you leave for me here or at my tumblr ***[mycroft-silently-judges-you](http://mycroft-silently-judges-you.tumblr.com)***


End file.
